Colour mark example: Ruff

On this bird we are fortunate to be able to see all of both legs. Note that the bird's left leg is on the ground, and its right leg is raised.

Look carefully at the left leg. There is nothing above the "knee" and below there is clearly a blue ring, but slightly obscured in the grass is a white ring below that. We read the combination starting from the top of the left leg as " nothing over blue-white". A useful notation for recording this is to draw a cross to indicate left and right leg, and above and below the knee and enter what you see as shown in the diagram to the right.

Now look at the right leg and see the metal ring above the knee (note it is shiny and hints of the engraved numbers). Below the knee is a white ring, then a red flag, then a white ring. This would be "metal over white-red flag-white" and the full diagrammatic representation of the combination is shown to the right.